The Abolitionists eBook

The slave-owners were numerically a lean minority
even in the South, but their mastery over their fellow-citizens
was absolute. Nor was there any mystery about
it. As the owners of four million slaves, on
an average worth not far from five hundred dollars
each, they formed the greatest industrial combination—­what
at this time we would call a trust—­ever
known to this or any other country. Our mighty
Steel Corporation would have been a baby beside it.
If to-day all our great financial companies were consolidated,
the unit would scarcely come up to the dimensions
of that one association. It was not incorporated
in law, but its union was perfect. Bound together
by a common interest and a common feeling, its members—­in
the highest sense co-partners in business and in politics,
in peace and in war—­were prepared to act
together as one man.

But why, I again ask, were the Northern people so
infatuated with slavery? They raised no cotton
and they raised no negroes, but many of them, and
especially their political leaders, carried their adulation
almost to idolatry.

When Elijah P. Lovejoy was shot down like a dog, and
William Lloyd Garrison was dragged half naked and
half lifeless through the streets of Boston, and other
outrages of like import were being perpetrated all
over the North, it was carefully given out that those
deeds were not the work of irresponsible rowdies,
but of “gentlemen”—­of merchants,
manufacturers, and members of the professions.
They claimed the credit for such achievements.
There were reasons for such a state of things—­some
very solid, because financial.

The North and the South were extensively interlaced
by mutual interests. With slave labor the Southern
planters made cotton, and with the proceeds of their
cotton they bought Northern machinery and merchandise.
They sent their boys and girls to Northern schools.
They came North themselves when their pockets were
full, and freely spent their money at Northern hotels,
Northern theatres, Northern race-tracks, and other
Northern places of entertainment.

Then there were other ties than those of business.
The great political parties had each a Southern wing.
Religious denominations had their Southern members.
Every kind of trade and calling had its Southern outlet.

But social connections were the strongest of all,
and probably had most to do in making Northern sentiment.
Southern gentlemen were popular in the North.
They spent money lavishly. Their manners were
grandiose. They talked boastfully of the number
of their “niggers,” and told how they
were accustomed to “wallop” them.

Then there were marriage ties between the sections.
Many domestic alliances strengthened the bond between
slavery and the aristocracy of the North.